For the sake of humanities
Whitney Knight
Staff Writer
Many degree programs at OCCC require at least two humanities courses.
These classes encompass a broad spectrum of topics ranging from ancient mythology and folklore to the study of various genres of film.
However, of the 48 classes OCCC offers humanities credit for completing, only 14 are labeled online with HUM — the prefix denoting the course as a humanities class.
Many students do not realize there are English courses, such as Introduction to Poetry and Women in Literature, and history classes, like African-American History and The American Indian, that also satisfy humanities credits.
The problem is, when students search for humanities classes online, only those with HUM prefixes show up. Other qualifying classes are omitted, which limits a student’s view of their options.
Instead, the complete list of accepted courses is buried deep within the pages of the college’s course catalog, a 200-page abyss that few students spare a second glance to after their first semester here.
Since students are not recommended to take humanities classes until their sophomore semesters, this can pose a serious problem since the majority of returning students most likely turn to MineOnline when enrolling.
After all, only someone with a very masochistic sense of humor would prefer coming to the college and waiting in line for eons to accomplish something they could just as easily do from the comfort of their home.
At the University of Oklahoma’s Web site, a comprehensive list of all qualifying humanities classes is provided for students’ convenience — even if they don’t carry the prefix of a humanities course.
OCCC should do the same. Even a simple notation in the comments section of MineOnline course listings would suffice.
Because so many deserving courses are not actually labeled as humanities, many students may have bypassed a class they would have truly enjoyed simply because they thought it didn’t fit into their degree plan.
That’s a shame.
OCCC needs to take a good, long look at its current system of designating humanities courses as such, because right now, it’s seriously lacking — and it’s hindering students.
